


Share and Share Alike

by out_there



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-06-04
Updated: 2005-06-04
Packaged: 2017-10-12 01:46:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/119430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/out_there/pseuds/out_there
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>TimTams have been shared, slug-worms have been squished and there isn't a naked Amazon in sight.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Share and Share Alike

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [](http://celli.livejournal.com/profile)[**celli**](http://celli.livejournal.com/) for the plotbunny. (She is the Sheppard to my McKay.) Thanks to [](http://in-the-bottle.livejournal.com/profile)[**in_the_bottle**](http://in-the-bottle.livejournal.com/) for betaing. I'm assuming that Rodney's worked with scientists of many nationalities and probably knows all the best chocolate-covered goodies. I respect that in a person.

Above them, the sky was charcoal grey. Dull, depressing and threatening to rain: the perfectly crappy ending to a remarkably crappy day.

It wasn't that the natives had been hostile. Rodney was getting used to that -- the running, the screaming, the shooting and the "Oh, my god, we're all going to die" panic -- in fact, he'd come to expect it. Any new planet that had life signs normally had a 30% chance of being friendly, a 40% chance of being hostile, and only a 0.003% chance of being populated by big-breasted, naked, Amazonian women. It was unlikely, but not statistically impossible. (He refused to believe it was statistically impossible.)

This planet had fallen into the 25% possibility of having natives that didn't care one way or the other, and refused to speak to them. It also had caves filled with worm-slug creatures and crystals that managed to amplify the energy readings from said slimy things so that it mimicked a ZPM. After five hours of exploring, he was tired, gritty and had a bag full of surprisingly heavy -- and probably useless -- crystals.

The only upside was that the container of slimy worm-slugs had been packed in Sheppard's backpack.

Rodney hitched the backpack straps higher on his shoulders and trudged on. The ground was rocky, red-brown soil occasionally contrasted by yellow-brown grass and a weird blue-grey scrub. They were walking uphill. From memory, the long, slight slope continued all the way to the puddlejumper. It'd take them at least another hour, so Rodney let his thoughts wander back to Atlantis.

The first thing would be the debriefing: explaining their total lack of success to Elizabeth and showing her the useless crystals. The second thing would be giving the crystals to Radek and letting him prove how useless they were. After that... well. Hmmm. After that, it was his call.

A hot shower and a change of clothes, certainly.

Correction: he didn't just want a hot shower; he wanted to sanitize every inch of exposed skin. His hands were still stained bright green from when he'd leaned on the wall, only to discover a mass of slimy, sticky ex-slug-worms squished under his palm. And between his fingers.

And, he noted with a certain disgusted dismay, under his fingernails. His fingernails were not supposed to be neon green.

He sniffed his palm. There was a clear, moist smell -- a bit like fresh mushrooms -- and he adjusted his priorities: debriefing, crystals to Radek, then checking with Carson to make sure this stuff could be safely washed off. After that, there would be sanitizing, scrubbing and whatever the hell it took to get the color and the smell off his hands.

There was only one cure for a day like this: sugar. The second his hands were a healthy pink again, he was raiding his sock drawer and eating as much sugar as he could stomach.

He was eating the caramels and the English toffee. He was eating at least one bag of Smarties, maybe two. And a Snickers bar.

There were three Mars Bars in the back of that drawer but they were being saved for a special occasion. Today had been tiring -- and, even worse, boring -- but he still wasn't touching the Mars Bars. Nothing short of losing a limb, or at least a toe, was making him touch those. But the Snickers...

He was startled out of his sugar-ridden fantasies when he stumbled over a red rock.

Shepard grabbed his arm and stopped him from falling face first into the dirt, which he appreciated since the crystals in his backpack would have left an interesting set of bruises. "How come you're not carrying the heavy crystals?"

"You're welcome, Rodney." Sheppard grinned and for a moment, his brows rose above the frames of his dark glasses. Rodney wanted to know why he needed sunglasses when it was blatantly overcast. "Maybe you could watch the ground instead of indulging in your decadent daydreams of chocolate?"

"How long did it take you to come up with that alliteration?"

"A while." Sheppard shrugged, and Rodney couldn't help noticing that Sheppard's backpack didn't look very heavy.

Rodney waited a few minutes, letting himself settle back into that familiar rhythm of long walks: right, left, right, sweat, trudge, hate the world. It was a simple pattern once you got it right.

He turned to Sheppard, who was smiling and looking around at the blue-grey bushes. Nobody should be that happy while exercising but if he wasn't actually enjoying this, Rodney was a monkey's uncle. Or possibly Kavanagh's uncle. "How did you know I was thinking of chocolate?"

"I knew you were thinking about sugar. Chocolate was a wild guess."

Rodney narrowed his eyes. "Then how did you know I was thinking about sugar?"

Sheppard ducked his head to the side. It was a quick, sharp moment but not one strand of his hair moved. "It's kind of obvious."

"How?"

"You get this look," Sheppard said, stepping over one of the larger rocks.

Rodney felt himself start to frown. He didn't like explanations that didn't explain anything. It was a waste of conversation and a waste of his time. Sheppard, apparently, enjoyed wasting both. "What look?"

"It's a look. A look you get when you're thinking about sugar. Similar to the look you get whenever you think about food."

"Could you be a little less specific?"

Sheppard snorted. "Precisely what do you want me to specify?"

Rodney rolled his eyes. For a guy who had no problems calculating pi, Sheppard was astonishingly dense. "Describe the look. If you can recognize it, you can describe it."

Sheppard shook his head slightly. "Is there any chance you're going to let this go?"

"Not unless you have a Snickers in your backpack." Then Rodney remembered the container of slug-worms in Sheppard's pack. "No. On second thoughts, no. Not a chance. You're going to have to describe it."

"Your eyes get..." Sheppard sighed, as if he was the one who'd had his day wasted carrying crystals and searching for non-existent ZPMs. Okay, he'd searched for the ZPMs, but the crystal carrying was all Rodney.

"Yes, Major?"

"Your eyes get glazed. They go wide and get glazed, like you're looking at some new Ancient thingamabob." Sheppard kept walking, watching the ground as he spoke. "Your mouth goes slack, which for you, is saying a lot. The color rises in your cheeks and you occasionally lick your lips."

"That's a fairly detailed description," Rodney said warily, waiting for the punch line. With Sheppard, there was usually a punch line.

"You think about sugar a lot," Sheppard replied with a shrug. "Once you understand what that expression of rapture means -- mainly that you'll be bouncing off the walls and annoying everyone around you until you pass out from exhaustion -- it becomes important to notice it."

"Why?"

"So I can stay in my quarters until you've returned to your normal, less exuberant self."

"Major," Rodney said slowly, trudging through a patch of knee-high grass that whispered as he stepped. "You're never in your quarters when I liberate my chocolate stash. You're always in the corridors somewhere."

"Huh."

Rodney couldn't remember the last time he'd been filled with that sugary, jittery energy and love for all humanity -- any species that invented processed sugars had to be pretty close to gods -- and hadn't ended up running into the Major. "Actually, I always run into you."

"Huh," Sheppard said again.

The slope got steeper, turning into a proper hill, so Rodney switched his concentration from talking to breathing. He thought back to the last time he'd indulged his sweet-tooth, clearly remembering running into Sheppard. He'd gushed about the wonders of caffeine, sugar and all the other wonderful chemicals that explained the body's reaction to those substances; then he'd shared his last TimTam with the guy.

"Huh," Rodney said, more to himself than anyone else, but Sheppard looked over at him sharply.

Sheppard lifted his sunglasses and scanned the horizon, his P-90 already in his hand. "What?"

Rodney blinked. "I shared my last TimTam with you." Chocolate gave him a certain affection for people -- or at least dulled his loathing towards most of them -- but that didn't explain sharing his last TimTam.

"Okay, for future reference," Sheppard said, settling his sunglasses back on and putting his P-90 away, "you need to separate your sounds. If you're about to say something random and meaningless, you need to use a different sound from the one that means you've just realized we're all in danger."

"I shared my last TimTam with you," Rodney repeated loudly, as if Sheppard was going deaf. "I don't do that."

"You did. You can't take it back now."

"I don't want to take it back."

Sheppard sucked in a deep breath and worked his jaw for a moment. "Good."

Rodney sighed. Good god, the man was dense. Handsome, in a boyish-charm kind of way, but dense. It was possible that Carson had lab samples that were smarter. "I shared my chocolate."

"You already mentioned that." Sheppard reached over and placed one slightly sweaty hand against Rodney's forehead. "No fever but you sound delirious. Maybe the slug-slime was hallucinogenic."

"I am not delirious." Rodney batted Sheppard's hand away. "The slug slime was disgusting, and makes me look like I discovered an exploding highlighter, but it's not making me see pink elephants."

"You're sure?" Sheppard's mouth was pulled tight, causing little wrinkles at the corners. "I can get Ford to stay with you and fly the puddlejumper back to pick you up."

"Great. Now you offer to save me the march back to the puddlejumper. You couldn't have thought of that forty minutes ago when I first complained about the weight of my backpack?"

"If you've got the energy to complain," Sheppard said, managing to sound both relieved and smug, "you've got the energy to walk the rest of the way."

"I'm not poisoned. I'm not delirious. However, the fact remains that I shared my last TimTam with you."

"And we're back to this nonsense. This is some kind of torture, isn't it?" Sheppard sighed. "I swear, McKay, there are times when you make Antarctica look like a warm, welcoming place."

Rodney let out a short grunt of pure frustration. Then he grabbed the Major's arm, pulled him to a stop and explained it in very simple terms. "There are people I have slept with who I wouldn't share my chocolate with. There are people I admire and care about who I wouldn't share my chocolate with. If it came to a choice between my cat and my TimTams, I would have trouble deciding."

Sheppard pulled his sunglasses off. He blinked, dark brows drawn in confusion as he stared at Rodney. As if Rodney was some Ancient device that he could understand, if he only thought hard enough. He wasn't far wrong.

"And I shared my TimTams." Rodney took a step closer, and poked Sheppard in the chest. "I shared my last TimTam. With you."

"Huh," Sheppard said, and this time, Rodney could hear the warmth and happy surprise in Sheppard's tone. There was no other word to describe Sheppard's smile: he beamed.

"Get it?" For a long moment, Sheppard's smile didn't change. Then he gave a quick nod and started walking again, leaving Rodney to scurry after him.

When he caught up, Sheppard shot him a smug grin and said casually, "You know, I have a bag of Mars Bars in the back of my closet."

"You do?" Rodney felt his eyes widen and his jaw drop, his mouth already watering at the thought. Huh. Maybe he did have sugar-craving expression.

Sheppard nodded. "It seemed like a waste to open it for just one person."

"Are you offering to... share?"

Sheppard pushed his sunglasses up the bridge of his nose. "Share and share alike."

Rodney grinned, and he almost didn't mind when the charcoal grey sky started to rain.


End file.
